


Ghosts Awake

by Silvestria



Category: The London Life (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Catharsis, Eleanor gets to be happy, Gen, Growing Up, Regency, bereavement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 11:23:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7975063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvestria/pseuds/Silvestria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summer of 1811, Lord Avening takes Eleanor to visit her father's old estate for the first time since his death the previous year. For Eleanor, it is a bittersweet journey into the past, with some glimpses of a brighter future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts Awake

_July 1811_  
  
It was not until they were already in the carriage that Lord Avening explained that the estate he wished to visit with Eleanor that summer was none other than Shotley Park, the house he had inherited from her father.  
  
Eleanor hardly knew what to say when he explained, hardly knew how to express her gratitude. Her eyes filled with tears in the carriage and her heart swelled: he was taking her home.  
  
Once upon a time, Shotley Park had been a large rambling Tudor mansion but after an unfortunate fire several years before Eleanor's birth, Mr. Clare had rebuilt it into a smaller but more elegant modern house. It had been the only home Eleanor had ever known, for she had never felt truly at home in the house in Bath Selina had persuaded her husband to take and school had been, well, school. All of her memories of her parents and of their happiness was bound up in Shotley Park, a place she had not truly expected to see again.  
  
Every road was familiar as they approached – every rut in the road even, and she recognised those ones which were new and exclaimed to herself over the loss of a tree or the expansion of an inn as they passed. After her father's marriage to Selina she had rarely returned to Shotley and the last time she had been there had been the previous January for her father's funeral.  
  
Such painful memories would increasingly intrude and as the carriage passed through the village, she shuddered to see the church and remember the last time she had been there, walking in state behind her father's coffin on its final journey from church to family grave.  
  
It was a beautiful summer's day, however, and the brightness of the sun, the green of the countryside and blue of the sky did their best to drive out recollections of that black January day. The drive through the park was accomplished smoothly and the house hove into view, gleaming in its soft Cotswold stone, open and light and welcoming.  
  
On the steps were Mrs. Prentice the housekeeper and Mr. Gaveston the steward waiting to meet them, with Hunter, Mr. Gaveston's black labrador, running up to the carriage with his tail wagging.  
  
The steps were put down and her guardian exited first and was accorded all the pomp which two loyal and dutiful retainers and an excited dog could give him. Eleanor stepped down afterwards with Lord Avening's assistance and saw Mrs. Prentice's face break into a fond smile. She wanted to speak to her, but the dog demanded her attention first, for he had recognised her easily, and in the confusion that followed, the formality was broken.  
  
“Here, Hunter!” Mr. Gaveston said, coming and taking the dog by his collar before looking up at her. “I'm sure it's very good to see you back again, Miss Eleanor.”  
  
“That it is!” And before she knew what was happening, Mrs. Prentice had pulled her into a warm embrace. “Well, my dear Miss Eleanor, it does my heart good to see you and out of mourning too. Poor lamb, it is a sad thing for a young girl to be in black. Miss Clare, I should say, for you are quite the lady now – but you will always be Miss Eleanor to us! Come in, do, and I will have tea brought in for you both.”  
  
The hallway was dark and cool in contrast, dominated by the familiar ticking of the grandfather clock, one of the few pieces saved from the original fire. Eleanor removed her bonnet automatically and glanced at a mirror along the wall and was almost surprised to see the reflection staring back at her, a wide-eyed, solemn young lady.  
  
“Just so did your mother look when Mr. Clare first brought her home after the wedding,” said Mrs. Prentice with a sympathetic smile as she took Eleanor's bonnet and cloak. “How you do take after her!”  
  
Eleanor smiled doubtfully into the mirror at the housekeeper and watched the pale, grave young woman smile back.  
  
The room where they took tea had rarely been used when Eleanor was little for her father, lacking a hostess, had not entertained formally. Selina had therefore made it her own and her changes were obvious. There was a row of pretty china shepherdesses on the mantelpiece that no Clare would ever have put there and the chairs had been reupholstered in pink and white. They would not have been the colours Eleanor would have chosen but she had to admit that they made the room light and even pleasant.  
  
The steward followed them in and talked to Lord Avening, answering his general questions about the estates and what news there was on the estate. Eleanor said little, for Hunter was lying at her feet and she was busy feeding him bits of her scone.  
  
Mrs. Prentice had given her her old room and when she went up to dress for dinner, Eleanor found herself standing in the middle, feeling a strange sense of unreality. There was her bed with the same coverlets, there her dresser with her little mirror and the toiletry set that she had left behind for being too childish. There was her little bookcase filled with those books which were particularly hers. She crossed to it, pulled one out and sat down on the bed with it, hearing the old frame creak in exactly the way it always had whenever she had sat on it before. She opened the book onto the front page, brushing away the dust as she did so.  
  
_To my darling Ellie on the occasion of your eighth birthday,  
Your loving Papa  
4th January 1803_  
  
It was _Gulliver's Travels_. Eleanor flicked through it before placing it carefully on her bedside table, resting her hand on the cover for a moment longer than was necessary. She dressed herself, with the help of Meg, a girl from the village who had come to help while she and Lord Avening were staying.  
  
After dinner, she crept downstairs to the housekeeper's room to take tea with Mrs. Prentice and asked her where Sally was, the housemaid she remembered.  
  
“Oh, Sally was married this April past!”  
  
“Married!” cried Eleanor. “To whom?”  
  
“To Jimmy Kale the butcher, can you believe it?”  
  
This was news indeed! “Sally is married to Jimmy! How lovely for them. But did you have any idea of it?”  
  
“None at all,” said the housekeeper emphatically. “And if I had I should have put a stop to it, for you know I will not allow _that_ sort of thing in my establishment. But I tell you, Miss Eleanor, I do not believe they ever met but at church, until the day Jimmy came to me bold as brass and told me he and Sally loved each other and intended to be married just as soon as the banns were read and he hoped I would not stand in their way.”  
  
“That was very bold of him!” said Eleanor.  
  
“So it was, but who am I to speak against it? Sally's always been a good girl. I shall drive into the village tomorrow; come with me and you can call on her.”  
  
“I should like that beyond anything,” she replied. “I shall bring her something too, if I can.”  
  
“That is very kind of you, Miss Eleanor, very thoughtful but quite unnecessary.”  
  
Eleanor did not say anything else on the subject but privately she determined that she would bring the new couple something. She had known them both all her life.  
  
“But enough of Sally!” Mrs. Prentice put her tea cup down and looked at her young mistress shrewdly. “What of you? I should think you have admirers enough of your own these days, Miss Eleanor, especially now you have been living in London.”  
  
Eleanor glanced up quickly, her cheeks reddening. “Oh! Oh no,” she stammered. “I – I am not out yet.”  
  
“You're a pretty young lady,” the housekeeper countered with fond firmness, “and any man that's got eyes in his head will see that whether you've made your curtsey to the queen yet or no.”  
  
“Oh.” Eleanor swallowed but, seeing that an answer was still required from her, felt obliged to continue, “There was one gentleman who I think liked me but he – he was not, it did not...” She shook her head, not wanting to speak of Mr. Osbourne.  
  
Mrs. Prentice relented and patted her hand. “Never mind, dear. You cannot expect that the first man that looks at you will be the one to marry. But don't think he will be the last, and you keep your own counsel when it come to selecting the right one. Lord Avening seems a kindly sort of man but lords have their own ways of doing things and a man's title is only worth as much as the man who holds it. Your mother always said that, you know,” she added suddenly.  
  
“Did she? She said that?”  
  
_A man's title is only worth as much as the man who holds it._  
  
“Often. She would say to me that give a good man a title and he is still a good man but give a bad man a title and he is made worse by it. Now, Miss Eleanor, I have not met many men with titles-” Here, Eleanor had to smile with her. “-But I have met a deal of men. You marry a good man, Miss Eleanor, and let the rest follow.”  
  
“I am not sure,” said Eleanor carefully after a moment, “that I am thinking of marrying anybody at present, but I will remember that.”  
  
Later, as she lay in bed and listened to the familiar creak of floorboards and rustle of the trees, she pondered on what her mother had said and wondered what had led her to that conclusion or whether it had been something _her_ mother had said to her. Catherine Clare had died when Eleanor had been four years old; she did not really know her mother. Even so, she fell asleep imagining the faint pressure of a gentle hand on her cheek and the sigh of a long forgotten song in her ears.

* * *

The following morning, Eleanor was left to her own devices for Lord Avening had much to discuss with Mr. Gaveston about the running of the estate. She breakfasted alone, having the pleasure of reading a book while she ate and then made her way to the walled garden to consult with the gardener. Forty five minutes later after pleasant discussion about what had changed and what had stayed the same and the sad fate of one of the pear trees that had been brought down in a storm in March, Eleanor was ready to leave for the village, armed with a pound of the best cherries and a particularly large marrow.  
  
Mrs. Prentice brought the trap round and Eleanor mounted up beside her, much as she had done as a child.  
  
“It will be quite a thing for them to see you,” the housekeeper exclaimed as they set off down the drive. “It has been a long time since a mistress of Shotley has taken an interest in the village.”  
  
“Oh, but - I am not the mistress of Shotley,” Eleanor protested, feeling a disjunction between her memories as a child riding to the village on the trap and the reality of her present situation.  
  
Mrs. Prentice snorted softly. “No, you are only Miss Clare, bringing a marrow to one of her poor tenants who got married. Nothing the mistress of Shotley would ever do, I'm sure.”  
  
Eleanor clasped her basket more tightly to herself and did not reply to the well-meaning sarcasm.  
  
The butcher’s house was at the end of a terrace. It was small and dark but very neatly kept and Mrs. Kale - Sally that was - welcomed her guests, deeply appreciative of the marrow and the cherries and embarrassed that she was not able to offer a more suitably fancy welcome. This matter having been brushed away, Eleanor spent a happy half hour with her, speaking of her father and of Shotley and all the people she knew. It was strange, she reflected afterwards; she had not talked so freely and happily of her father once since his death as she did in Sally Kale’s tiny parlour.  
  
They left eventually, though Eleanor promised she would call again before she left the country, and spent the rest of the morning visiting other people in the village who depended on the kindness of the Shotley estate. The previous vicar’s elderly widow, a pair of spinsters who lived together in poverty after being brought low by the bad management of their male relations, a farmer who had too many children to take care of, another who had none to take care of him. Even though in many cases Eleanor hardly knew them or had only known them as a little girl, they all greeted her very kindly and spoke warmly of her father. Selina’s influence was significant only by its absence in their remarks. She made many promises of assistance - too many, Mrs. Prentice warned her afterwards - and finally returned to the house exhausted but feeling more truly useful and happy than she had felt in a long time.  
  
Over supper, Lord Avening listened to her talk enthusiastically of her day with patience and real interest, for he had rarely heard his ward speak so much at any one time. He advised her on those promises she could not fulfill and agreed his assistance for those she could.  
  
“In future,” he said, “you had better not be too firm in saying what can or cannot be done, Eleanor. That may lead you into difficulties.”  
  
She was suitably chastened, but when he began to make suggestions for how those people’s lives could be improved in other, more practical ways, she entered readily enough into the discussion which lasted longer than the meal.  
  
The following day was Sunday and church was sure to dominate. Lord Avening took his carriage to the village and the two of them arrived in state before the morning service. When was the last time someone as lofty as a marquess had attended their service? It was surely unheard of! Not since the days of Lady Julia Clare… And there were not many who remembered that. Eleanor felt their eyes on her as she led her guardian to the family pew at the front and immediately bowed her head in the appearance of prayer. It was hard to focus, however, sitting here in this familiar, old building, where she had been baptised and confirmed and where her parents’ funerals had taken place. After the service was over and she had spoken to Mr. Cowen the vicar and received an invitation to tea from Mrs. Cowen, she made her excuses to Lord Avening and slipped away into the churchyard. Spreading out from a shady corner next to the east end was the Clare plot. Old graves almost crumbling of long dead ancestors, their names barely visible, sat alongside newer ones. Eleanor carefully brushed some moss off her mother’s tomb stone.  
  
_Catherine Anne Clare  
12th February 1770 - 19th July 1799  
Frederick Clare  
18th - 26th July 1799  
May light perpetual shine upon them._  
  
Next to that joint grave were the bright, sharp lines of the newest addition to the group.  
  
_Edward Moncrieff Clare_  
_6th June 1760 - January 16th 1810_  
 _Beloved husband and father._  
  
How inadequate were the words! Eleanor thought almost angrily as she wandered the graveyard, picking a selection of wild flowers to lay at her parents’ graves. Selina had chosen the memorial - how bland, how untruthful in her case! The anger faded by the time she returned and she laid her simple offering between the two graves before, not caring for the grass stains on her dress, she sat down on the ground.  
  
Amid the rustle of the trees and the odd snippet of birdsong, the graveyard was filled with the kind of peace that can only be found in the most ancient and revered of English country churchyards. Eleanor sat with her parents for a very long time.

* * *

On Monday morning, Lord Avening announced he had business in Bristol and would be away two nights, perhaps longer. He left soon after breakfast. For the first time in her life, Eleanor was truly alone. She was not afraid, however, for there was nothing to alarm her at Shotley. Nor was she lonely. In fact, she found she liked the solitude very well. With nobody to make demands on her time or question her choice of activities, she wandered alone around the estate at great length, reacquainting herself with all its corners, familiar and unfamiliar. She sat for hours on end by the river with a book, Hunter snoozing at her feet. She walked to the village and took tea with Mrs. Cowen before walking back, all of her own accord. She dined at whatever hour pleased her and sat wherever she wanted in the house. When she was tired of solitude, she found Mrs. Prentice and learned all about the making of gooseberry jam. She wrote long, relaxed, happy letters to Gwen, Elise and Lizzie, Becky and Mary. She even opened up the lid of the old pianoforte and sat pensively on the stool, remembering.  
  
Mrs. Clare had taken her on her lap and placed her own hands over Eleanor’s little ones to press down on the keys of the instrument. Eleanor pressed her hands down now and the sound of the chords echoed unexpectedly loudly in the quiet of the house. She could almost imagine she could feel the faint pressure of her mother’s fingers and hear her gentle laugh.  
  
_“There, Ellie my sweet, you see how you must do it! How accomplished you will be!”  
  
“You play now, Mama!” _ she had insisted.  
  
How lovely it must be, Eleanor thought, suddenly aware of the emptiness of the room, to have a child to play to and to teach. She wondered with an unexpected ache whether she would ever have a daughter to sit on her lap and teach to play simple chords. The silly, childish noises would disturb Papa in his study… But no! How could Papa be disturbed by his wife and his daughter? He would laugh and join them and pretend to play, making such a hash of it he had to be doing it on purpose, and the little girl would laugh and she would laugh and the whole house would be filled with laughter! At this point, as the silence seemed to fall particularly oppressively, she did not know if she was remembering or merely wishing.  
  
She rose from the piano stool and opened it up to find her mother’s music. It was all old fashioned now, compared to what she had learned at school, the sort of things that were popular when Miss Catherine Bentley had been young, but Eleanor picked a piece and began to play it. Her sight-reading was not good enough for the piece to be coherent but she could imagine it in her head as it ought to sound - she could _remember_ it, and the music filled the whole house.  
  
Lord Avening returned the following day from Bristol with an air of satisfaction about him that he did not share with Eleanor till they were sitting together after dinner.  
  
“Well, Eleanor,” he said. “You like it here, I see.”  
  
She looked up from where she sat on the window seat, taking advantage of the evening light as she did her embroidery. “It is my home,” she replied simply.  
  
“Hmm yes. You're quite a changed girl here.”  
  
“Oh dear, am I? I hope not in any detrimental way.”  
  
He shook his head and took his time before saying anything else. “For the better in every way, Eleanor. You are not so shy, you converse well, you show initiative and especially you show a pleasing understanding of your position which is unusual in one so young. Yes, this gives me great hope for your debut next year in London, if you behave _there_ as you do _here_.”  
  
Eleanor trembled and looked down for she was not at all sure that was likely to happen.  
  
“You do me too much honour, my Lord,” she said quietly.  
  
“No,” he said and stopped. “I do not believe I do you enough. I have been very... But a young lady of worth must be prized and encouraged. Eleanor, come here. I have something to say to you.”  
  
She stood up, put her work down, and came to stand by his chair until he waved her into one next to him.  
  
“These past two days in Bristol I have done nothing but speak to lawyers. A very tedious… but that's beside the point. The point is that I believe I shall be able to do it.”  
  
“Do what?” asked Eleanor, seeing that he required a response.  
  
“Break the entail on Shotley,” he answered musingly. “It will be an expensive business and a great deal of trouble but there is no reason it cannot be done.”  
  
Eleanor stared at him in astonishment. “Break the entail? But -”  
  
He sighed and patted her hand. “I have no need of this place that has come to me from your father. It is a pretty estate, true, but I have several other more profitable ones. I have no need of an additional property and four thousand a year.” Now he looked at her clearly. “But I think you do, Eleanor.”  
  
She could only look back.  
  
“I intend Shotley to be yours. Either on the point of your marriage or when you turn twenty-one, whichever is first.”  
  
She continued to stare. “Mine, my Lord? You mean, in my dowry?”  
  
He smiled faintly. “No. I am not going to this confounded trouble for the sake of your husband! Yours, to do with as you please and leave to whom you please. A younger son perhaps or even a daughter.”  
  
Eleanor’s heart had begun to pound and she hardly knew where to look, she felt such a confusion. “You are giving me Shotley?” was all she could say again.  
  
“That is my intention.” He stood up and looked down at her. “I will leave you to think about what this means.” He squeezed her shoulder as he passed and the door soon clicked behind him.  
  
For a few moments Eleanor simply sat there, stupefied. Then she stood up and looked around the room. Evening sun poured in through the French windows and she opened them with trembling hands and stepped out onto the lawn. She walked in circles, hardly knowing where she went.  
  
Mistress of Shotley! The housekeeper’s words echoed in her head. She was Mistress of Shotley! Oh, not yet, but she would be. She could be. She looked up at the smiling, sandstone façade and felt it approved of her. She would not manage the place herself, of course; Mr. Gaveston would continue to do that. But she could live here and take care of her tenants and play on the pianoforte and every day could be like the past week! Why, she would not even have to marry at all! How many girls could say that with confidence? But even as she thought it, she thought of the little girl at the piano and how sometimes the house felt too quiet, empty of the family that ought to fill it. No, she might not need to marry, but she wanted to, very much.  
  
And this changed everything for her in that respect too, she realised. A year ago she had been a schoolgirl with fifteen thousand pounds which had seemed quite enough and no doubt in time if her father had lived, he and Selina would have brought her out into society in Bath. Then she had become the ward of a marquess and could look forward to (in the loosest meaning of the phrase) a London season. And now she was to have that season, armed a house of her own and a life income of four thousand a year! There would be men who would find that very attractive. She was not so naive as to think there wouldn't be. How would it change things for her? She did not know for sure but she knew it would.  
  
She found a pretty wrought iron bench situated on the edge of the lawn and sat down, looking up at her house. Her guardian had not just given her a house, she realised, as she thought about it further. He had given her an income, an independence and power. The power to live life as she wanted, the power to choose. Eleanor had never desired any kind of power and she had thought that she must be terribly bad at it if she ever got it. The thought of being in charge of a household of her own, of having to order about servants and make decisions while all of society watched and waited for her to trip up had always terrified her. But this week had felt so natural, so easy. And having power and an income meant having the power and means to do good and help those who depended on her. A life time spent improving the lives of others would be a life indeed well spent. Eleanor sat back and stared upwards, listening to the chattering of the rooks which were starting to make their way home for the night as they appeared across the sky in a great black cloud of busy wings. She felt a comforting sense of solidarity with the births. After all, they shared a home.  
  
How peaceful it was! How happy _she_ was. Leaning forwards and clasping her hands together, she gave sincere thanks for every step which had led her to this moment.


End file.
